Between Hope and Fear
by EnchantedApril
Summary: A GSR story encompassing and following episode 81 Dead Doll.  Sara is gone and Grissom can only keep himself going in order to find her. Part TWO up.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Some of you may know me from my HouseMD stories. I am not abandoning that fandom, but this episode, and the relationship between Grissom and Sara - particularly Grissom's quiet and fragile determination - inspired me to write. It's my first story since my wedding, so I'm rather pleased!I hope you all enjoy.

**Between Hope and Fear**

**I. Nightmares**

You have always been able to wake yourself from nightmares, even from a very young age. At seven, when you had visions of your ants escaping and crawling across your bed you willed your eyes open, rolled over and saw the glass-encased colony still contained on your bookshelf. In high school, during the usual dream of arriving at a class in time for a test you hadn't studied for, you blinked a few times and woke to moonlight cutting across your room and landing on the pile of textbooks you'd all but memorized. Later, much later, when crime scenes started to invade your subconscious, you were able to wake yourself before the knife came down or the gun fired or the building exploded. When you dreamt that Sara was the one trapped inside the coffin which had held Nick, you forced your eyes open before you had to watch her mouth her goodbyes.

It's natural then, that you keep trying to wake up from the nightmare of Sara trapped beneath a car. Your fists tighten until your nails cut little half-moons into your palms and you clench your jaw and squeeze your eyes closed, shouting at yourself to wake up. You want to wake up and reach over and touch the soft, worn cotton of the tank tops she always sleeps in. She will be lying there beside you, safe and warm and alive. Alive. All you have to do was wake up. The words are a mantra in your head.

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up for God's sake!

Then your eyes open and you find yourself still in the lab, still searching for any clue that will lead you to her, still praying that it's really just a nightmare.

**II. Water**

Brass is talking to you, trying to keep you calm, although you think you're already doing a good job of it. You haven't thrown anything or shouted or smashed that damn miniature into a thousand pieces. He explains everything that's being done and you know it was all that could be done. That doesn't make it enough.

When the weather report catches your eye, you just stare at it for a minute, taking in every word. You say nothing as you fill a beaker with water. You don't know what you are going to prove. Even Natalie hasn't used sand that's to scale in the miniature. Even she couldn't have modeled something that so exactly matches the terrain that it could be used for geological flood pattern predictions. But you pour the water anyway. You watch it fill the area under the car, just the way you knew it would, and you watch the tiny waxen arm stop its fitful clutching.

You tell yourself that it is just a model, a mechanical model that naturally shorts out when water is applied. You repeat that basic fact to yourself over and over as you look out the window at the rain pouring down, and try not to picture her struggling to breathe beneath a crushed car. You think of the way she touched your face years before you'd been strong enough to allow a relationship to form.

The images of all the different times she touched you in the past, are part of what is keeping you calm.

Warrick is trying to convince you that she might not actually be under the full-size version of the red mustang, but you know better than to cling to that false hope. Natalie is insane, but you'd seen into her eyes. You know she'd succeeded in her mission. Partially succeeded. Partially, you repeat to yourself. She wanted Sara to die, but that wasn't going to happen. It couldn't.

**III. Searching**

Everyone is working on overdrive, frantic to find Sara before any more time passes. You keep yourself rigid, methodical, practical. An outsider would think that she was more important to just about anyone but you. Catherine, alone, seems to sense what is right below the surface. She knows that even touching your arm will make you break, and you can't afford that. Coffee is pressed into your hand, and you look over and see her standing there staring at the same maps you've been studying.

The helicopters have been directed to the west and Hodges has narrowed it down even further, but it isn't enough. There are miles of desert to search, and no more clues. The sun is rising and you rub your eyes. Catherine has left without you even noticing, and her voice calling from the hallway makes you jerk your head in her direction. Nick's lead on the car panned out and Brass has called in the location. Icebox Canyon. They know where she is.

It's less than thirty minutes away. All this time, and she's been less than thirty minutes away.

Nick drives and you let him. It feels like you are going in slow motion although there are sirens blaring in front of you and behind you as a small army of police speeds towards the location of their fallen sister. You want to be there already, but you are also terrified of what you'll find.

For twelve hours you've unsuccessfully attempted to shut off your feelings, push them aside in favor of cool logic and leadership. That was what would find Sara, not your feelings. They were nothing but a liability. To her… and to you. The pain that seems to fill every inch of your chest now is exactly why you rejected her again and again. You can selfishly admit that now.

_'Tis better to have loved and lost  
Than never to have loved at all. [1  
_  
Damn your mind and its uncontrollable urge to spit out quotations to fit any situation. It won't be better to have loved her if you lose her. Tennyson was a damn liar. That's what you keep telling yourself. You don't want to acknowledge that one day of loving her is worth anything. Any pain. Admitting that would be like admitting that she's dead, and you aren't ready to do that.

_I will not mourn, although my heart is torn,  
Oh, love forever lost! I will not mourn.[2  
_  
But you will mourn. Forever.

You scrub you hand across your face, and Nick glances in your direction but said nothing. He's been quiet on the drive which isn't like him. You got the distinct impression that he wants to say something though. He and Sara have always been close. Early on you'd actually thought that he'd be better for her than you and the jealousy had nearly killed you and had made you push her away even harder. His foot is pressed to the floor, and he has his eyes set on the distance and his hands tight around the steering wheel. He blames you.

That is what you are sure he wants to say. You aren't sure he's wrong. Natalie took Sara because of you. You've seen crimes of revenge before and have comforted the loved ones left behind with rational words of absolution. Those words mean nothing to you now.

"It's not her day," you hear Nick murmur beside you.

You ask him what he means because for a second you're irrationally angry at the idea that he's making light and saying that today is just not Sara's lucky day. He corrects your assumption immediately.

"It's not her day to die," he says, and his voice sounds tight and strained.

More strained than yours, and you're the one who's supposed to love her.

You don't answer him, but instead crane your neck to get a better look at the helicopter that's circling not far away. The radio crackles to life and the only words you really take note of are the ones that say the car has been spotted. Nick picks up even more speed and steers the SUV off the bumpy dirt access road you've been traveling on and into the desert.

**IV. Vest**

Your door is open before the SUV has even fully stopped, and you're running as soon as your left foot hits sand. Nick is right behind you, and other cars are pulling up behind yours but you're the first person to scramble over the scrub-topped dune and see the car. See the sand.

In that instant you want time to stand still. You are desperate to find her, but when your brain takes in the sight of the overturned car, half buried in the sand, you suddenly don't want to take another step closer. There's no question what you will find and you don't want this nightmare to become reality.

You don't want to find her body, cold, grey and lifeless. You don't want to see her lips, pallid and unmoving, her hair matted with sand, her eyes closed forever. Until this moment there was still hope, and now that hope is dying within your own breast. As long as she was just missing, she was still alive. Once you find her, there will be nothing more to do. There will be no way for you to save her.

Apparently your body isn't listening to your mind. It's still moving, down on its knees, fingers scraping, digging, tearing at the shifting earth. Your voice is shouting her name and now you hear the strain and desperation that you'd missed earlier.

Nick is beside you again, digging, digging, feeling for something in the sand. You see him pulling something out, and you stop, your heart feeling like it's stopping too, and watch him brushing sand off of her vest.

Sidle.

You see her name stitched in white. You've seen it hundreds of times, maybe thousands, but it's never brought this mix of emotions to your soul. You want to vomit. You want to scream. You want to tear the vest from Nick's hands and hug it to your body. He shouldn't be touching it, it should be you. Is this relief? Her vest is here and she's not in it, but the rush of pure terror and adrenaline at the vision of her buried in the sand, is still coursing through your body. It will be a few minutes before it spikes again and then drains, like how it did when you were driving out to Lake Mead with her and were almost sideswiped by a semi.

But it won't be pure relief this time, because even if she isn't under the car, she's still not in your arms.

**V. Survivor**

Clever. Smart. Brilliant.

Self-sufficient.

That's it. It isn't just her intelligence, it's her self-sufficiency that led her to walk away from the wreck and the flood, that moved her hand to place stones for you to follow, that is keeping her walking.

Her past is known to you now, or at least enough for you to know where the self-sufficiency comes from. You're carrying the smallest topmost rock from the first pile she left, and it's in your pocket where you can feel it banging against your hip. It's a slight pain but a sliver of your consciousness is accepting it as partial payment for everything you've done in the past to keep "self-sufficient" as one of the top ten descriptors for CSI Sara Sidle.

Although now that attribute seems to be working in her favor, so maybe you will be able to forgive yourself a little - she already has - when you find her.

When you find her.

You scan the horizon again with your binoculars. Catherine is with you now, and Nick has gone off to drive all the roads in the area with Sofia. You shouldn't be thinking about anything personal now, much less your feelings, because you should be concentrating one hundred percent of your energy on finding Sara - and you are - but you are also aware of the fact that you're glad you have Catherine beside you now and not Nick. She won't look at you accusingly.

If you really thought about it, you'd know that Nick wouldn't do that either. You just feel like he should.

More than once, Catherine has commented on Sara being a "smart girl" to leave those stone markers. She does it again and you want to say that Sara isn't a "girl", she's a woman, and a damned intelligent one. An amazing one. One who deserves more respect than she gets. You don't say anything because you think that Catherine is already feeling some twinges of guilt over all of the petty arguments that she and Sara have gotten into over the years. You also don't want her to turn it around on you, because she definitely could. No one disrespected Sara the way you did for five years. You made it into an art form.

You aren't seeing any more stone markers and you feel your jaw tightening as you put down your binoculars. That's when you see the boot.

"Oh no," is the only thing that comes from your mouth as you start to run. A mind under stress can't be expected to be eloquent.

Down in the sand, it's the car all over again, but this time there's an actual body. It's already stiff beneath the thin covering of sand. It. It. You still can't think of it as her, and then a heartbeat later you don't have to, because Catherine is telling you that it isn't. You're relieved and without remorse at the fact that you are thanking the God you aren't sure about, that some other person has died instead of her.

Because she is alive. She is. You just have to find her.

Catherine comes up behind you as you stand looking off into the distance.

"Where is she, Cath? She's been out there all day. It's a hundred and ten degrees. She's disoriented, dehydrated…"

"She's a survivor," Catherine tells you.

But you already know that. You know how much she's already survived in her life. You don't want to hear that she's a survivor, you want to hear that she has survived.

Again.

**VI. Finding**

Two more stone markers have been found, but it's been ten minutes now and you've circled an ever winding perimeter and haven't spotted another one. Your fingers are beginning to tingle from the nervous energy you're forcing yourself to keep contained. If you didn't, you'd just be shouting her name at the top of your lungs.

You hear a female voice behind you and it isn't Catherine. It's Sofia, her words coming through the radio in Catherine's hand.

They've found her.

You close your eyes for just a second, controlling heartbeat, pulse and respirations, which all threaten to rage out of control.

They've found her and they're calling for a medevac. As you run back to the nearest car, you convince yourself that they wouldn't be calling for a chopper if she wasn't alive. By car, you're less than five minutes from their location. They feel like years.

The chopper has already landed and you bolt out of the car and run to where a small group of people is surrounding a small, still body. Her body. They're putting on an oxygen mask and you listen to them calling her name and trying to get her to respond. You've never felt more helpless in your life and you press your hand across your mouth and push your thumb and index finger against your eyes. You're not going to break down now. If all you can do is watch, then that's what you'll do.

In only a few seconds your quick mind, so adept at cataloging a crime scene, has memorized each scrape on her face. Arm - broken. Head - bruised, possible concussion. Forehead - lacerated above right eye, near hairline, requiring stitches. Skin - pale, bloodless. Respirations - shallow. Every time you see the oxygen mask fog up from her breath, you take a breath yourself.

No one wastes any time in getting her onto a backboard and ready for transport. You can't do a thing except be there, and you are. Flashes of interactions are playing inside your head as you stare at her face, willing each breath, each heartbeat. Her asking you to dinner. Her almost leaving. Her draping a blanket over your shoulders. Her sitting stiff and silent in the locker room after you all found Nick. You driving her home, and everything that followed. You wiping away her tears - some of the few you'd ever seen her shed. You telling her that she makes you happy.

You're beside her head as they load her into the helicopter. The blades are spinning and the noise is intense. Nick is hanging back, just watching, arms to his sides. For less than a second, you are jealous that he's the one who found her, but the thought doesn't even have time to fully form in your mind. You look at her face and she's still breathing. Still living. Catherine is asking where they're taking her, but you aren't even listening. You don't need to know. You're going with her.

**VII. Helicopter**

The noise in the helicopter is almost deafening and you're thrust back in time to the months before your surgery. It's not something you need to be remembering at the moment. Both of the EMTs are still working on Sara, shouting her stats back and forth to each other. You can barely hear them, but your ability to lip read comes in handy. She still isn't responsive. You didn't need to hear them say that to know it.

There is an icepack pressed against the top of her head to lower her body temperature, and intravenous fluids are dripping slowly into her arm. They've immobilized her broken arm, and the scrap of fabric she used as a sling has been tossed to the galvanized steel floor. Her eyes remain stubbornly closed despite the fact that you are willing them open. All of the movement has disturbed the clotted blood sealing the cut on her forehead, and now it is bleeding sluggishly, the red liquid slipping down the side of her face to disappear into her hair. You want to reach over and apply pressure, or tell one of the men hovering above her if they see that she's bleeding, but you know they have more important things to attend to. Like keeping her breathing.

Her right hand is resting on her stomach. You sense this, more than see it, because you aren't moving your eyes from her face. Reaching out, you cover her thin, pale, grimy fingers with your own. She's overheated and yet her fingertips feel cold beneath your warm palm. Your thumb strokes them gently and you can feel the embedded grains of sand that she'll be washing off for a week.

You're still willing her eyes open because you won't be able to feel real relief until she looks at you. Until she knows that you're there with her and that she's safe and that you're not leaving her. You may have given her cause to wonder about that in the past, but you're never going to do that again. If she just opens her eyes, you'll be able to tell her that.

And then, while you watch, her left eyelid slides upward just slightly. You tighten your grip on her hand without even thinking about whether or not you're squeezing too tightly. You know that you aren't. Her other eyelid flutters and then both are parting to let you see into the depths of her dark eyes.

At first you aren't sure if she knows where she is, much less that you are with her, but then those always piercing, questing, serious, playful, haunted, joyful, beautiful eyes are locked on yours, and you're speaking to her without saying a word. You know that your mouth has formed into the smallest of smiles. It's a smile that doesn't' come close to expressing the unbelievable happiness you're feeling at that moment, but it's always been the small gestures that have mattered the most between the two of you.

Then you think that you see a faint twitching at the corner of her mouth and feel her hand moving slightly. You tighten your grip, letting her know that she doesn't need to move or smile or do anything at all except lie still and let you take care of her. The fact that you aren't actually the one caring for her doesn't make any difference, because at the moment you imagine that your love alone is what's keeping her tethered to this world. You know that if that is really true, you have nothing to worry about.

_  
Notes:  
1. Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson  
2. Heinrich Heine_


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks, everyone for reading this story. Writing these characters is really enjoyable and I can see myself doing a lot of it in the future. Please review and let me know what you think!

**VIII. Hospital**

When the helicopter lands on the roof of Desert Palms Hospital, everything returns to moving very quickly. The flight to the hospital was a respite and you're glad you had the chance to collect yourself, because now you have to go back to being her strength. You'll be replaying the look in her eyes and the feel of her hand for the next four hours, because you barely have the chance to tell her that you're with her, you're not leaving, you'll be waiting for her, before she is rushed away from you and through foreboding double doors to the emergency ward.

You collapse onto one of the ugly vinyl-covered chairs in the waiting room and hold your head in your hands. No one else is around so you can allow yourself this moment of weakness. It feels like you haven't slept in a week, and that only makes you think of how much worse she must be feeling. You breathe deeply and press your thumbs against your temples, pushing back the migraine you know is just beneath the surface.

One of the nurses walks over to you, stride quick and purposeful. She has paperwork and one of the EMTs told her that you're Sara's supervisor. A supervisor would have to call back to the office and get Lucy to fax over Sara's personnel file. You know its contents by heart.

Under 'allergies', you are able to list off penicillin and under 'medications' you list her birth control pill and the low-dosage anti-depressant which you convinced her to keep taking even after she told you that you are the only drug she needs. You hadn't that much responsibility. You were afraid you'd disappoint her, and quite honestly, you did. Several times. You are just grateful that she is a very patient woman.

The family history section is a little harder to fill out but you know the basics and check off the appropriate boxes. Emergency contacts is the easy section. You write in your name and information and only hesitate under the 'relationship' box. You can't fill in 'husband' and there's no box for 'person who will cease to exist without her'. You scribble in 'partner' because you'll be damned if you just call yourself her friend, and then hurry on to the insurance information.

When Catherine comes rushing into the area, you are at the desk handing over the plastic clipboard and forms. She spots you immediately and hurries over. Her hand on your arm is startling because no one has touched you since this all began. She must sense that your façade isn't quite as close to crumbling now that Sara has been found.

"How is she? Has anyone told you anything yet?"

You tell her that you haven't heard from the doctor's yet. "She opened her eyes," you say, and the words sound much more reverent than you'd intended, and yet they sound right.

"Oh thank God," spills from her mouth ahead of a long breath of relief. You realize that maybe Catherine hadn't just been feeling guilt out in the desert. She and Sara have formed a tentative bond of friendship.

"Where is…"

She cuts you off before you can complete the thought.

"Nick's parking the car and Sofia went back to the lab. Everyone knows that we found her, but they're gonna want details from someone who was there," she explains.

You just nod. Of course they will want details. They're her friends, and you all too often forget that. She has become your whole world, but you have never told her that, and you have never asked exactly where you fit in hers. In your best moments you've imagined that she feels the same as you. She is, after all, the one who never gave up on a relationship no matter how many reasons you gave her to do so. For two intelligent, well-read people, you are remarkably stingy with words. The boy who grew up not needing spoken words, and the girl who learned that they usually just cost her a slap across the face. The letter you never sent contained more emotion than you'd ever expressed to her, and half of those words were not yours.

While you walk back to your seat, you promise yourself that you are going to change.

Nick joins you and Catherine a few minutes later, and he is full of nervous energy. His foot taps on the floor, and he runs his fingers through his short-cropped hair repeatedly as his eyes watch the clock. He and Sara have a special relationship, that much you know. Greg still looks at her with slight wistfulness sometimes, and Warrick slaps her on the back after a job well done, but only Nick communicates with her through his eyes. It's not the same as you, not even close, but there's a sense of sibling camaraderie there. Maybe he reminds her of the brother she has only mentioned to you twice. He is dead now, victim of a drug overdose by his own hand. Sara was still in foster care and didn't even get to attend the funeral.

So much of her life has been marked by tragedy or adversity and now she's lying in the ER with another nightmare to add to her collection. The thought infuriates you and saddens you at the same time. You could have given her so many more happy memories to combat the bad ones, but it always seemed like there would be plenty of time for that.

Catherine volunteers to go get coffee, and Jim arrives just after she returns. Two hours later and you have only half finished the dark bitter liquid but you keep the cup clutched loosely between your hands. The news is reporting on Sara's rescue and the report says that there is no word on her condition. They are words you didn't need to hear, because you are already close to just getting up and barging through those double doors and finding her. She's been out of your sight for much too long.

Nick is pacing the length of the room. He already threatened to do what you are now contemplating doing. You told him to let the doctors work and bit back the fact that if anyone was going to go in search of her, it would be you.

"I didn't thank you, Nick," you say slowly, watching as he stops his repetitive course across the room.

"Grissom…" he starts to wave you off.

"No," you continue. "If you hadn't found her when you did, she would probably be dead right now." Another man would have trailed off before those last few words left his mouth, but you've always been almost painfully blunt.

Any jealousy that had flashed through your mind in the desert has been replaced with profound gratitude, and you need Nick to know that.

He seems to understand, because his eyes soften and his shoulders relax slightly.

"If I hadn't found her, you would have," he says, and maybe he's right, but you are glad you didn't have to find out.

Catherine has never been prone to emotional reactions; life has made her harder than that; but you hear her sniffle and when you look over, she's concentrating on the bottom of her coffee cup.

A few minutes later you all look up when the doors open and a doctor comes in, obviously looking for you.

"Gil Grissom?"

You stand up and can't understand why now, of all times, your knees feel weak. You spent the day walking through the desert and never tired, but now, imagining everything the doctor could be about to tell you, is what makes you feel close to collapse

"She's been asking for you," he says, and there is a collective sigh of relief from everyone else in the room.

"How is she?" Jim asks before you can get the words out.

"Stable now," he tells you. "Broken left ulna, multiple contusions on the rest of her body, moderate concussion and a scalp wound that required seven stitches. Beyond that it's just heat exhaustion, dehydration and minor scrapes."

You are about to ask why the hell he couldn't have come out to tell you all of that an hour ago, but then he looks at you, only you, and says that it was touch and go for a while there. Her heart rate plummeted just after they brought her in and they were afraid she was going to go into cardiac arrest.

Somehow you are still standing although your vision is swimming at the idea of losing her again so soon after finding her.

"When can I see her?" you ask, your voice stronger than it has any right to be.

"We're settling her in a room now. I'll send a nurse out to you. We'll be keeping her for a few days, just for observation, to make sure all of her levels are back to normal." He looks around at Jim and Catherine and Nick. "You can all go in for a few minutes, but then you'll have to leave and wait for visiting hours tomorrow."

You know that rule doesn't apply to you.

**IX. Vigil**

Just as the doctor promised, a nurse comes to escort you all to Sara's room. She's on the fourth floor and you hope the room has a decent view of the city. She'll like that. The nurse, you've noticed by the time you arrive that her name is Karen, pushes the door open and repeats that you can only spend fifteen minutes with her. She needs her rest.

You expect Nick and Catherine and Brass to be crowding you at the door, but they are hanging back a few steps and you look over your shoulder with a questioning look on your face. You honestly have no idea what they're waiting for.

"You go ahead," Catherine says, and you can hardly believe it, but her voice sounds a little wavery. "We'll give you a few minutes."

And that's when it occurs to you that all the months – the years – you spent wondering how the rest of the team would take your involvement with Sara, have all been a waste. You swallow against the sudden emotion in your throat. It's an unfamiliar feeling for you and you think you should say something.

"Go on, man, she's waiting for you," Nick says, and you look at the three of them for one more moment before turning and heading into the room.

Only about half of the overhead lights are on, and the sun has almost finished setting, so the feeling in the room is one of peace and calm. You let those feelings wash over you as you look at her lying still beneath crisp white sheets.

There's an IV running into her right arm, and her left is in a proper cast from wrist to mid-bicep. There are butterfly bandages in place of stitches high on her right cheek, and you can see the seven real stitches almost hidden in her hair. The nurses have done a good job cleaning her up, but there is still sand in her hair and beneath her nails. You want to take her home and care for her the way she has cared for you in the past. You think about the night she shaved off your beard.

A few steps and you are beside the bed and she has heard you and blinked open sleepy eyes to look at you.

"Hi," is what she says to you in words, voice scratchy and soft, but her expression is filling in the rest.

You lean over and kiss her gently on the lips, reveling in even that small taste of her, and realizing that you don't think you could have gone on without ever experiencing it again.

"I love you," you say, because you don't want her to have to read your face. You want to give her the words. She deserves them.

The tears that spring to her eyes are completely unexpected and shock must show on your face because she feebly tries to lift her right arm as if to wave them away. The fact that telling her you love her is enough to make her cry, tells you that you should have told her hundreds more times than you did. You capture her hand and kiss her fingertips and then you use your other hand to wipe away the new tears that she doesn't have the energy to contain.

"You're going to be just fine," you say, reverting to simple facts to put her back on less emotional ground.

"So they say," she says with that lopsided little smile of hers. "Did you catch Natalie?" she asks, and at first you think that she's asking out of fear, but then you look in her eyes and know that it's just the ever-present investigator at work.

"Yes, we caught her," you tell her. Maybe in a few days or a few weeks, you'll tell her more

She nods, seemingly content with just that bit of information.

"Half of the LVPD was out looking for you," you tell her then, because you need her to know how important she is, not just to you but to everyone who knows her. You know she hasn't had that much validation in her life.

"If I'd known that, maybe I wouldn't have worked so hard to save myself," she jokes lightly and then coughs, the sudden movement causing her pain.

After assuring you that the doctors have already pumped her full of painkillers, you relax again and return to stroking the back of her hand.

"You did save yourself," you say, not wanting her to think that any of her effort was in vain. "The whole area around the car was flooded." You don't tell her about the hiker's body.

"Yeah," she says wryly, "I had a feeling that was gonna happen," she says and you know that eventually she'll tell you the whole story, but not tonight.

"There are a few people out in the hall who want to see you. Are you up for that?"

She nods yes, and then asks, "Why didn't they come in with you?"

You tell her that they wanted to give the two of you a few minutes alone first. Her eyes go wide and you don't have to tell her anything else, because it's obvious that she knows already.

When you stand up to go and get the others, she tightens her grip around your hand.

"Gil?"

Your eyes tell her to go on.

"I love you too," she whispers. "I never gave up."

The knot in your throat is back and you lean over and kiss her again. "Neither did I, Sara."

At first, your coworkers keep their distance from Sara, crowding around the bed but not touching it or her. They say encouraging things and tell her how they knew she was too tough to give up. It's after Jim grasps her good wrist firmly in his thick fingers, that some sort of spell seems to break and Catherine and Nick take each take a step closer. Catherine pats her leg, and Nick brushes a light kiss against her cheek. They stay for just a few more minutes before the nurse comes around and says that visiting hours are already over and everyone needs to leave.

Sara's energy seems to be at an end and her eyes are heavy-lidded as she says goodbye to Catherine who says that the rest of the team will be by in the morning, and Nick, who promises to bring some decent food, and Jim, who just squeezes her hand and calls her a tough cookie. The door swings shut behind them and Sara looks up at you.

"You're exhausted," she says, voice weary and slightly slurred from the drugs. "See you in the morning?"

The shake of your head confuses her and a tiny crease forms across her forehead.

"I'm not leaving, honey," you tell her.

She attempts to argue with you. "You need your sleep."

"I need something more than sleep," you say. "I need to be with you."

Considering all of the times that you have left her alone, those words could easily sound like the world's worst joke, but she accepts them at face value. Her hand moves toward you and you slide your chair closer so that you can touch her.

"I'm glad you're staying," she says, "'Cause I kinda feel like I need to be with you right now too."

You gently run your fingers up and down her arm while looking into her face. She has her eyes fixed on yours and you tell her to sleep and that you will be with her the whole time. A sigh that sounds like it carries the weight of the ages with it comes from between her parted lips.

"Thank you," she whispers, as her eyes slide closed.

She's asleep almost instantly and can't hear you murmuring the same thing back to her. Thank you for fighting. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for not leaving me.

**X. Home**

The doctors release her from the hospital three days after her rescue. It is two days late as far as she is concerned. You're amazed at how you have gone to somewhere close to despair, to somewhere approaching euphoria over the course of seventy-two hours. With every sign of her healing, you have felt lighter, certain in the fact that whatever else happens, at least you will face it together.

The first thing she wants to do when you get home is take a shower. She hasn't had a proper one since before her kidnapping, and she's very insistent. There is no way you're letting her risk slipping and hurting herself, especially with only one working arm, so after encasing her cast in a garbage bag, you strip off your clothes and step under the streaming water before offering your hand to help her into the tub. She shakes her head and laughs at this overprotective side of you, but you don't think she really minds, especially when your strong fingers are massaging shampoo into her hair. A little sigh escapes her and she lolls against you. The feeling of her body pressed to yours is like a benediction.

Later you fix her a vegetarian stir-fry with pad-thai noodles and her favorite tea. She eats as if she hasn't had food in a week, her eyes smiling at you above the rim of her teacup. You eat without tasting much because you're much more interested in just watching her.

After eating, you fall into your normal routine. You stretch out on the bed together, her with a book, you with a magazine, the television on the history channel. If your hand strays to her arm more often than it used to, she doesn't say anything. In fact, she moves closer to you and rests her head against your shoulder. Before long, despite all her talk about being perfectly healthy, her eyelids start drooping and she reaches over to turn out her light. Although you aren't tired yet, you turn out your light as well. You lie in bed beside her, body curled around hers as much as possible without aggravating any of her injuries, and as you feel her relax in your arms, and you hear her breathing even out until she is sleeping, a quote floats through your mind and you don't stop it.

_This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts  
Make of so noble individual parts  
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.[3  
_

_  
Notes:  
1. Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson  
2. Heinrich Heine  
3. John Donne, Ecologue on the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset_


End file.
